EL SEGUNDO – Since we have the same question you have and since the Celtics think they have the answer, we decided there was no reason to wait until Game 1 to challenge Pau Gasol’s toughness. Video of Gasol highlights vs. Boston.

So we went right at him, confronting him with the fact he got his skinny tail kicked two years ago against Boston.

“I don’t have to prove anything,” said Gasol, who might be the only person in Staples Center on Thursday who doesn’t think Pau Gasol has anything to prove in these Finals.

He talked about understanding the need to “be aggressive,” to “not back down, to “continue to attack.”

Great, we thought, the Celtics are coming with Kevin Garnett’s elbows, Kendrick Perkins’ shoulders, Rasheed Wallace’s forearms and Big Baby’s big everything else and the Lakers are countering with the Cliché Kid.

This team needs Gasol to be a genuine international roadblock not just the Spanish Imposition.

“My mind is in the place where it needs to be right now,” Gasol said, as if his mind is going to establish position against all of Boston’s muscle and mass.

Come on, Pau, you remember the taunts of “Ga-soft” during the 2008 Finals. There’s only one way to quiet them now.

“Why would I have to feel that way?” he said. “This is no proving point. That’s just wrong.”

At about that moment, Lakers publicist John Black announced, “Phil Jackson will be available in two minutes.”

Said Gasol, apparently growing weary of our line of questioning and hoping to be rid of us, “Sure it’s not in one minute?”

Having moved on to Jackson, the coach confirmed that the Lakers’ “big guys are going to have to stand up,” and we’d like to add, shove the Celtics right back.

“We don’t have a smack-down mentality,” Jackson continued. “We don’t go out there to smack people around.”

Sadly, it’s too late to change that now.

Jackson did note that some of the Lakers are capable of playing that way, naming Kobe Bryant, Ron Artest and Derek Fisher. Notice, he did not single out any of the Lakers’ three largest regulars – Gasol, Lamar Odom or Andrew Bynum.

Recall, too, that it was during the Phoenix series when Jackson observed that the Lakers’ big men are “somewhat thin-chested.”

When TV guy Jim Hill, a former NFL player who should better understand athletic violence, began a question by suggesting this series has a chance to become physical, Gasol interrupted.

“It will be,” he said. “It doesn’t just have a chance to be. It will be. That’s a given.”

Gasol’s response to that physical challenge, however, is anything but a given.

In the Lakers’ most recent game, the Western Conference clincher at Phoenix, Gasol was shoved around by Amar’e Stoudemire. Late in the fourth quarter, he flopped to draw a charging foul. In all, it might have been Gasol’s poorest game as a Laker.

Believe us, particularly in Boston, a flopping Gasol will get nothing but mocked against Garnett.

Here’s hoping he understands this. Odom appears to grasp the concept. He prepared for the start of the Finals by working out this week in a Los Angeles gym called LB 4 LB, which is pronounced “pound for pound.” Yes, he boxed.

So far in the playoffs, Gasol has faced big men like Nenad Krstic, who is big in physical dimension only; Nick Collison, who isn’t even big that way; Kyrylo Fesenko and Kosta Koufos, who are more mouthfuls than handfuls; and Stoudemire, a power forward who rebounds like a small forward.

What Gasol is about to face is more imposing than anything he has seen since, well, since the ’08 Finals, when he averaged 14.7 points and 10 rebounds in the six-game loss to the Celtics.

Despite going double-double, Gasol emerged from the series with a tainted reputation, fleeing directly to the weight room, where he has added subtle strength if not obvious bulk.

“I think they were a little more ready the last time than we were,” Gasol said. “We’re in a better place now.”

He still was a new Laker in the late spring of ’08. Now, he’s an established Laker. More importantly, he’s a defending NBA champion.

And he knows what facing the Celtics this time of year is all about. We hope.

“I felt it now on my own skin,” Gasol said somewhat poetically, “especially during the games in Boston.”

Nothing personal, but, on the eve of this angry waltz with the Celtics, the Lakers don’t need one of their big men sounding like a poet.

Jeff Miller has been a sports columnist since 1998, having previously written for the Palm Beach Post, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami Herald. He began at the Register in 1995 as beat writer for the Angels.

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